The Lord Chief Justice said yesterday of the Archbishop’s views: ‘It was not very radical to advocate embracing sharia law in the context of family disputes’.

He added there is ‘widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of sharia law’.

Lord Phillips said: ‘Those who are in dispute are free to subject it to mediation or to agree that it shall be resolved by a chosen arbitrator. There is no reason why principles of sharia law or any other religious code should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of dispute resolution.’

Lord Phillips said that any sanctions must be ‘drawn from the laws of England and Wales’. Severe physical punishment – he mentioned stoning, flogging or amputating hands – is ‘out of the question’ in Britain, he added.

Barrister and human rights specialist John Cooper said: ‘There should be one law by which everyone is held to account.

‘Well-crafted laws in this country, drawn up to protect both parties including the weak and vulnerable party in matrimonial break-ups, could be compromised.’

Resolution, the organisation of family law solicitors, said people should govern their lives in accordance with religious principles ‘provided that those beliefs and traditions do not contradict the fundamental principle of equality on which Britain’s laws are based.’

Spokesman Teresa Richardson said religious law ‘must be used to find solutions which are consistent with the basic principles of family law in this country and people must always have redress to the civil courts where they so choose.’

Robert Whelan, of the Civitas think tank, said: ‘Everybody is governed by English law and it is not possible to sign away your legal rights. That is why guarantees on consumer products always have to tell customers their statutory rights are not affected.

‘There is not much doubt that in traditional Islamic communities women do not enjoy the freedoms that they have had for 100 years or more in Britain.

‘It is very easy to put pressure on young women in a male-dominated household. The English law stands to protect people from intimidation in such circumstances.’

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: ‘Mediation verdicts which are incompatible with our own legal principles should never be enforceable. One of the key aspects of our free society is equality. This should be understood and respected by all.’

The Ministry of Justice said: ‘English law takes precedence over any other legal system. The Government has no intention of changing this position. Alongside this, it is possible to resolve civil law dispute by other systems.’

What, then, caused them to embrace violent jihad? In a city flooded with televised images of civilians dying in Iraq, the forces of politics and religion surely weighed on these men’s lives. For some of them, public outrage merged with personal grievance.

Yet individual experiences and ideological convictions can only explain so much. Increasingly, terrorism analysts have focused on the importance of social milieu. Some stress that terrorists are not simply loners, overcome by a militant cause. They are more likely to radicalize together with others who share the same passions and afflictions and daily routines. As the story of Jamaa Mezuak suggests, the turn to violence is seldom made alone. Terrorists don’t simply die for a cause, Scott Atran, an anthropologist who studies terrorism, told me. “They die for each other.”

The question of what drives someone to terrorism has given rise to a cottage industry of theories since Sept. 11. None may fully explain what happened in Jamaa Mezuak: why some of its young men chose to become terrorists when most have not. The notion that poverty is to blame has been debunked again and again. And while religious extremism can feed militancy, many experts prefer to emphasize the anger generated by political conflicts, like the war in Iraq or the Arab-Israeli struggle.Many may sympathize with a cause, but few ever turn to violence. Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former C.I.A. case officer, holds that people prone to terrorism share a sequence of experiences, which he outlines in his forthcoming book, “Leaderless Jihad.”

They feel a sense of moral outrage that is interpreted in a specific way (the war in Iraq, for example, is interpreted as a war on Islam); that outrage resonates with the person’s own experiences (Muslims in Germany or Britain who feel marginalized might identify with the suffering of Iraqis); and finally, that outrage is channeled into action.

This process, Sageman told me, is rarely a solitary one. He and a growing number of law-enforcement officials and analysts argue that group dynamics play a key role in radicalization. While ideology may inspire terrorists, they say, it takes intimate social forces to push people to action. Friends embolden one another to act in ways they might not on their own. This might be called the peer-pressure theory of terrorism. Experts in the field refer to it as the BOG, for bunch of guys (or GOG, for group of guys). “Terrorism is really a collective decision, not an individual one,” said Sageman, who coined the theory. “It’s about kinship and friendship.”

Jihadi groups, like most social circles, tend to rely on frequent, sustained interaction, Sageman told me. People are drawn together by a common activity, like soccer, or by a common set of circumstances, like prison. Often they meet in the temporary spaces born of immigration.

In groups predisposed to violence, there is often a shared grievance around which members first rally. In the case of urban American gangs, the grievance could be police brutality. For the Hamburg cell behind 9/11, it was the war in Chechnya.Law-enforcement agencies have begun changing their approach to counterterrorism in tandem with their heightened awareness of the role that groups play. Investigators in Europe, Canada and the United States are now conducting surveillance of suspects for longer periods of time, in part to observe the full breadth of their social networks.

The horrors and inhumanity of what has happened in Iraq is poisoning the minds of millions of young people across the planet, not just in Morocco. A miniscule number are choosing violence as their way of unleashing vengeance, or evening scores.

But the West is clearly losing the battle of the mind when young men in Morocco can look to television and see for themselves the untold destruction and death unleashed by the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and feel driven to seek revenge, and all that can be done is to increase surveillance on groups of young men who may or may not be plotting terror attacks.

In the New York Times Magazine story, young Moroccan men are quoted as saying that President Bush is the “biggest terrorist in the world.” They say this, apparently, because they’ve seen on TV what has happened to the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Bush’s nickname of being “The World’s Greatest Terrorist” is seen at marches and rallies all over the planet.

War is Terror, and Terror is most certainly War.

Osama Bin Laden’s calls to jihad would be next to worthless without the wars of President Bush to supply the imagery and horror stories that rots so many souls, and helps to poison so many minds.

The wars feed the terrorism, and the terrorism feeds the wars.

Hopefully it won’t take another generation to end this circle of violence and inhumanity.

Homosexuality has always existed in Morocco, but until recently it was a taboo, a hchouma(shame)and something practised between very closed doors…I remember that many years ago when Nourredine Ayouch dared publish a reportage about Moroccan gays in his magazine -kalima-(the word), the magazine was banned from circulation and the journalistts harrassed..Now the Moroccan authorities put on plastic eyes and behave as homosexuality is something that tolerated, accepted and even publicized…
The gay who has recently got married and celebrated his marriage with music , dancing and drinking alcohol , as you will see in the video below, is a famous figure in the small ,conservative city of KSAR EL KEBIR ( THE PARADOX HERE IS THE MAYOR OF THE CITY IS AN ISLAMIST AND MEMBER OF THE PJD ( the Moroccan islamic party ).He is a bootleger and a notorious gay but ,well, as long as he is not a devout moslem, everything is fine with him….The dying moroccan economy needs him to boost gay tourism in a region known for its poverty…

What does Islam say about homosexuals?

Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Homosexuals Should Be Punished Like Fornicators But Their Harm Is Less When Not Done in Public

Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on June 5, 2006.

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Kerry, who ran against Bush, was supported by homosexuals and nudists. But it was Bush who won [the elections], because he is Christian, right-wing, tenacious, and unyielding. In other words, the religious overcame the perverted. So we cannot blame all Americans and Westerners.

But unfortunately, because the Westerners – Americans and others – want to flatter these people on account of the elections, a disaster occurs. In order to succeed and win the elections, he flatters these people, rather than saying to them: No, you are sinning against yourselves, against society, and against humanity. This is forbidden. Instead of leveling with them, people flatter them to win their votes. This is the disaster that has befallen humanity.

[…]

Interviewer: How should a homosexual or a lesbian be punished? We mentioned the story of the people of Sodom and how Allah punished them, but how should someone who commits this abomination be punished today?

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: The same punishment as any sexual pervert – the same as the fornicator.

[…]

The schools of thought disagree about the punishment. Some say they should be punished like fornicators, and then we distinguish between married and unmarried men, and between married and unmarried women. Some say both should be punished the same way. Some say we should throw them from a high place, like God did with the people of Sodom. Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement.

[…]

The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.

Interviewer: There is an issue that some people may find strange. If homosexuals and lesbians belong to the same category – an inclination towards the same sex – why are there different punishments for men and women, for homosexuals and lesbians?

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: A punishment for who?

Interviewer: For homosexuals and lesbians – the punishment for a woman who favors women, and for a man who favors men.

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Lesbianism is not as bad as homosexuality, in practical terms.

[…]

Interviewer: Should a man be punished for having homosexual tendencies?

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Yes, he should.

Interviewer: Or maybe he should be punished only for committing this sin?

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: He should be punished just like a fornicator. What is fornication? It is a sexual perversion. A perversion cannot possibly be innate.

[…]

Interviewer: Some Arab authors have begun to discuss this openly, in newspapers and in their books. Homosexual characters appear in some Arab films. In addition, homosexuals gather in public, and show up at parties in a loathsome manner.

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Not in all countries, only a few…

Interviewer: In many Arab countries.

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Perhaps you in Morocco have that…

Interviewer: Not only in Morocco. Also in other countries, which I won’t mention.

What is the position of Islamic law on this public display?

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: This is the calamity of societies. When sin and abomination are concealed, they don’t cause much harm.

[…]

But the calamity becomes widespread, when it stops being a secret and becomes public.

[…]

We are not hostile towards these people. On the contrary, we pity them. But we do not want to give them an opportunity, like the Westerners, who consider this a normal phenomenon, and it has become widespread, I’m sad to say.

Ksar El Kebir ceremony linked to charlatanism, Interior Minister

Preliminary investigations showed, so far, that the ceremony which took place on November 18-19 in the northern city of Ksar El Kebir is related to charlatanism rather than a wedding ceremony between sexual perverts, Moroccan Minister of Interior, Chakib Benmoussa said on Thursday.

Speaking before the Interior, Decentralization and Infrastructure commission of the House of Representatives, Mr. Benmoussa insisted that “regardless of any media and political exploitation of this event, it is worth mentioning that the preliminary investigations showed this ceremony was linked to pure charlatanism-related rituals.”

According to a press release of Ksar El Kebir’s public prosecutor, a delinquent, with a criminal record, held a Gnawa-style party to which he invited several people, some of whom were dressed like women. The host intended to “fulfill a vision” in which a woman came to him and asked him to dress like her and offer a present to Saint “Sayed Al Madloum” (man endowed with supernatural powers).

Up to now, no elements confirmed that the incident was a wedding ceremony between sexual perverts as reported by some locals, he said, stressing that, “pending the final conclusions of the probe, the collected data shows the incident is rather a personal party marked by rituals of charlatanism held at a regular basis by the people involved.”

Six suspects were arrested in relation with this case and will be brought before justice soon. On Monday, the Public prosecutor of Ksar El Kebir’s first instance court decided to bring before justice the people involved in this party and ordered the seizure of all material that can reveal the nature of the party.

Following this ceremony, media have reported that more than 600 people took to the street in the city of Ksar El Kebir, chanting slogans criticizing the couple’s audacity to hold a gay wedding in the open.